


Seedling

by quantumvelvet



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumvelvet/pseuds/quantumvelvet
Summary: Even in death, Mordremoth was life. It's only fitting that something be born from his ashes.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hydrangea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrangea/gifts).



For seconds, minutes, hours, an eternity, there is nothing but deep, green darkness, and the sense of infinite weight surrounding her on all sides. Once, it reminds her of a cavern deep within the earth, but there is no room in the miniscule space she's carved out within the dark for such unimportant thoughts, and they shred apart, torn and shattered by the weight, ground finer and finer until she forgets not only the concept of 'cavern', but also the void it had once inhabited. Words fail and flee her, falling away one by one until there is only the barest concept of self, and she clings to it with the desperation of one who knows that once she lets go, there will be nothing left within her tiny void, only the crushing weight, the endless green.

 

Something shifts, and the smothering infinity around her is wracked by shock and rage, too vast for even its all-encompassing depths to contain, and she is certain that this is it, that this will rend her apart along with all the world. And then something brushes across her brow like a brother's kiss of benediction, and she is alone, floating weightless in the void that had once contained everything that is and was and might be, and her first word since the world began comes to her, naming the dull ache in her chest 'sorrow'. Something has been lost that will never come again, devoured and destroyed or devouring and destroying the green in its death throes.

 

Gradually, she becomes aware of the pieces of herself floating around her, countless points of solidity in the emptiness that drift inward, drawn to the flickering self that is the only point of will remaining within the vast and soundless space that had once been filled to bursting with nothing but will. The concept of _reach_ settles in, sending shudders through her being, and she does, grasping at the nearest fragments and relearning the concept of _fear_ when some drift out of reach. If they, too, fall into nothingness, will she ever truly be?

 

She remembers pain, searing across her skin _(hide?)_ like the crack of lightning through the flesh of an old tree. Pain, and pale green eyes filled with grief and grim determination. Not hers, she knows, and yet as much hers as her own are, twin, half her soul, that-which-answers to her that-which-questions. A name drifts beyond recollection, like thistledown caught by a stray breeze, and she relearns frustration and love as she grasps and gropes after it.

 

The name eludes her, but memories spill in, stretching the pressed-tight boundaries of her self near to bursting: a hand in hers, a brush of lips, bruising argument and the harmony of accord, new vistas opening like strange flowers, the endless teasing mystery of the horizon, a clash of blades, a swift parting that feels as though it will bleed the life out of her. The touch of a hand, poisoned, and her perspective gives a wrenching shift as she realizes that hand was her own, bestowing and retrieving a curse.

 

_Nightmare._ The word resonates through her being, and the wheeling motes of self spin ever inward, a constant stream of memories-thoughts-images too swift for her to sort through. She breaks and reforms and breaks again, and every time she is more herself, and more agonizingly aware of the next breaking. It is harder to bear than the emptiness, harder even than the crushing infinity that she can now name  _dragon_ , creator-god and nightmare deeper than any of the horrors she had sought in her first learning of the world. She screams her voiceless rage into the emptiness left behind by the dragon's death throes, and the largest mote of all shreds through her, turning her torrent of hatred into sharp, fierce triumph.

 

_Defiance._

 

A distant whisper drifts across her fledgeling being, beloved and hated and terrifyingly weak, “We are more alike than you ever knew.”

She grasps for a name, and this time she finds it, and it takes root in her like a small, strange flower, its scent both tantalizing and repulsive:  _Mother._

 

“Why didn't you tell us?” she cries into the void, and the emptiness shivers with her reaching outward.

 

No answer comes, and gradually she realizes that this is a fallow field. Nothing new will grow here, least of all the understanding she craves. She will have to venture elsewhere to chase her questions, and as she drifts, eternal and alone, searching for some concept of elsewhere, one last sequence of motes flicker against her self:  _Tyria, the world, life_ . She draws them in greedily, and the universe explodes in agony. Light streaks the darkness, green veined with gold, and crushing weight falls in again around her. This time, she pushes back, and slowly, so slowly, the weight recedes a little, and she feels herself expand and contract, making the light-veined world shiver.

 

_Breath. Pulse._

 

She continues to push and claw at the weight, and it shifts around her, defining her borders separate from the heavy fluid that surrounds her. Body. She loses count of the number of breaths she takes before she finds the next border, the one enclosing the fluid, and feels it buckle slightly at her touch ( _hands, fingers)_ before rebounding. She pushes harder, clawing at the resistance, and finally it gives way. The liquid shudders and collapses, rushing outward, and the light pours in. She struggles to breathe in the new nothingness that surrounds her, and collapses forward, points of pain spiking through her ( _knees, chest, shoulder_ ) when she lands, choking and gagging. The liquid tastes sickly sweet as she spits it back up, and finally manages to draw in a new breath ( _air_ ).

 

The world shudders once more, and time falls into place, sized for a body, not a thought. It's no longer an eternity between breaths, and her ragged panting slows as she remembers how often she should need to breathe. 

 

Slowly, she pushes herself up, relearning the sequence in which her joints need to move, these joints, the one she first woke with. The light stings her eyes, and she squints against it as she surveys her surroundings, the ruptured pod she'd forced her way out of, and three intact ones. Shapes float within them, one broad and curving and more than twice her own height, another smaller, perhaps a third her height, and squat, its head oddly triangular in shape. The third most closely matches her fledgling recollection of  _person_ , her own size and rough shape. She takes a faltering step towards it, and then another, and another, until she can lay her hand flat against the surface of that pod. It gives slightly under her touch, warm and pulsing, as though she's touching a heart, and the shape within twitches slightly as though in response.

 

_You were Firstborn. Now you are first among the Lastborn. They will need you to learn themselves._

 

The voice drifts across the edges of her mind, once-Mother, now something else, though she cannot find the precise concept of the relationship, and realizes it's one she'd never known in her first life. In its wake, it leaves one last gift, the one that defines and names her.

 

_Faolain._

 


End file.
